Old Play in Manhattan

Nathan the Wise (adapted from the German of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing by Ferdinand Bruckner; produced by Erwin Piscator). This famous plea for tolerance, which a wise Christian wrote 163 years ago about a wise Jew, is still eloquent propaganda if pretty hopeless theater. It is easy to see why it was one of the first works burned by the Nazis when they came to power. Laid in Jerusalem at the time of the Third Crusade, it offers a setting in which Christian, Jew and Mohammedan can hardly help being at one another's throats. But by restricting them to purely verbal combat, Lessing has them end up in one another's arms. The noble-minded Nathan rids the hot-tempered Crusader of his intolerance, the keen-witted Saladin of his doubts.

Rather unexpectedly, the play comes to life not in its dramatic scenes but in its didactic ones. At such moments, even in Refugee Bruckner's halting translation, Nathan the Wise has timeliness and force. The rest of the time it is cluttered with an old-fashioned plot that, in spite of being remarkably complicated, is even more remarkably static.

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